A refreshing change in every respect.

When you are working with great ingredients, you want to keep it simple. You don't want to blur flavor by overcomplicating. This is why Pure Dessert, from the beloved Alice Medrich, offers the simplest of recipes, using the fewest ingredients in the most interesting ways. There are no glazes, fillings, or frostings — just dessert at its purest, most elemental, and most flavorful.

Alice deftly takes us places we haven't been, using, for example, whole grains, usually reserved for breads, to bring a lovely nutty quality to cookies and strawberry shortcake. Pound cake takes on a new identity with a touch of olive oil and sherry. Unexpected cheeses make divine souffles. Chestnut flour and walnuts virtually transform meringue. Varietal honeys and raw sugars infuse ice creams and sherbets with delectable new flavor.

Inspired choices of ingredients are at the heart of this collection of entirely new recipes: sesame brittle ice cream, corn-flour tuiles with tangy sea salt and a warming bite of black pepper, honey caramels, strawberries with single-malt sabayon.

To witness Alice's idea-stream as she describes how she arrived at each combination is to instantly understand why three of her books have won Best Cookbook of the Year. She's an experimenter, tinkerer, and sleuth, fascinated with trial and error, with the effects of small changes in recipes, exploring combinations tirelessly and making remarkable discoveries. Does cold cream or hot cream do a better job coaxing out the flavor of mint leaves or rose petals? Why is it that dusting a warm brownie with spices gives it an enticing aromatic nose, whereas putting the spice in the batter blurs the chocolate flavor? Do cooked strawberries or raw make for the better sorbet?

Loaded with advice and novel suggestions, with great recipes and eye-catching, full-color photographs that show off these simple, straightforward desserts, Pure Dessert is an education and a revelation. Thank you, Alice!

"If vanilla is your idea of plain, Medrich will revolutionize your thinking. In her vocabulary, vanilla is a flavor; she distinguishes among the nuances of Bourbon, Mexican, and Tahitian extracts, powders, and beans. Plain means tasting the milk, butter, flour or fresh cheese that defines a cake or custard. She describes 10 different sugars, from 'neutral' granulated white to slightly 'smoky' dark brown piloncillo. Her three previous cookbooks (including BitterSweet) won awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and her new book is sure to attract the new generation of cooks devoted to elaborate simplicity. Readers should be aware, however, that the brevity of ingredient lists may mislead; some gardens and markets may lack such nonfungible items as lemon verbena, chestnut flour and muscovado sugar. But all will welcome the ultimate summer pudding recipe-berries, bread, sugar, whipped cream-and the liberating range of frozen desserts." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Medrich reshapes the universe of sweets by focusing on fewer but finer ingredients and using them in fresh ways. The renowned baker and three-time Cookbook of the Year winners recipes are not only better-tasting and unusual, theyre more healthful as well. Illustrated.

Just one slight turn of a kaleidoscope and the tiny colored pieces shift ever so slightly, but enough to create a beautiful new pattern. With just such a shift, Alice Medrich creates a whole new picture of what dessert can be, focusing on fewer but finer ingredients and using them in fresh ways.

Alice Medrich's personal approach to recipes and techniques and her obsessional understanding of chocolate have inspired several award-winning cookbooks, including BitterSweet, Cocolat: Extraordinary Chocolate Desserts, and Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her daughter.